Wine gadget ‘magically’ lives up to its advertising

Testers agree that device has practical application

There are a lot things a wine lover can put in his or her tackle box. Whether you want to remove a stubborn cork or call up tasting notes for just about every wine ever made, there’s a gadget for that. The inner MacGyver in me loves these devices, but honestly you don’t need much outside of a tulip-shaped glass and a sturdy corkscrew to enjoy wine.

One of the largest sub-categories of wine doohickeys are devices that instantly age or somehow influence the tastes and/or flavors of wine. I’ve tried just about all of these and I’ve got one word for them: bogus! Over the years, I’ve conducted blind tastings with various magnetic and electronic gizmos that you either place the bottle in or attach to the bottle neck. They either flat out don’t work or have such a minimal influence that they’re virtually useless.

The Vinturi acts like a decanter. Both allow wine qualities to develop more quickly. So with this slightly cynical mind-set, I was more than a bit skeptical back in January when my friend John Morris asked: “Hey, Gil, you heard about the Vinturi wine aerator?” Yes, I had. It’s a $40 thingamajig that “magically” enhances a wine’s flavors and aromas. Essentially, it’s a plastic shot glass with a large hole on the bottom and a small hole in the side.

Morris, who is nobody’s fool, understood my apprehension, but insisted I give it a chance. To my utter disbelief after tasting six wines — plain and poured through the Vinturi — the thing works.

Intrigued, I called three of the best palates in Atlanta. They were unavailable, so I had John Kessler, the AJC’s food columnist; Eric Crane, director of training for Empire Distributors; and Joe Truex, co-owner and chef of Repast, for a Vinturi tasting.

I served several very different wines: 1999 H. Brac de la Perrier Chassagne-Montrachet, 2001 Gaja Conteisa, 2003 Warre’s Port and an unmentionable wine (more on that later). The wines were tasted blind and almost without fail, they picked out the Vinturi-enhanced wine. Essentially, the Vinturi works like a decanter, which allows a wine’s hidden aromatic and flavor qualities to develop, only a lot faster.

What I didn’t expect out of this tasting was a heart-felt discussion about what is lost and what is gained when one uses gadgets like the Vinturi.

“I think if you wanted to get from point A to point B, the Vinturi will achieve that purpose,” Truex said. “It will take a wine from one stage to another. But there are other things that happen to wine.” Sitting squarely in the anti-gadget camp, Truex prefers to see how a wine develops over time.

Not exactly pro-gadget, Crane saw the practical side to Vinturi-like devices. “If I’m going on a fishing trip with my buddies, sometimes I want to enjoy the drive there and see the sights,” Crane said. “But there are other times when I just want to get there. Would I prefer to always have the time to sip, swirl and see how a wine develops? Sure, but that’s not always possible.”

Truex believes we all could linger longer over our wines. When we skip the journey between the cork popping and the last drop, we forget that wine is a living thing that evolves and expresses itself in different ways over time.

“People over-decant wine in general,” Truex said. “A lot of wines don’t need oxygen. If it is a fresh, young wine, why change it?”

Kessler and I mostly observed Crane and Truex exchange opposing views on wine gadgets, decanting, screwcaps and corks. However, when Truex pointed out that a wine’s journey is just starting as it is poured into a glass, Kessler remembered a meeting with Gaia Gaja, the Italian winemaker who recently visited Atlanta.

“I do think there is something about how a wine changes in the glass and that would be missed” with the Vinturi, Kessler said. “When we were tasting with Gaia Gaja the other day, she poured one that was very closed off. It was very interesting how it changed and evolved. That was exciting.”

Nevertheless, Kessler, who was the most skeptical coming in about the Vinturi, said he’d still buy one. Kessler would have you note one key caveat regarding the Vinturi: It won’t put lipstick on a pig.

The unmentionable wine mentioned above was one I found previously to be awful. I thought the Vinturi might work its magic on this $6 red wine from California. Unfortunately, the panel felt the aerator only highlighted the worst parts of this already dreadful wine.

There’s not a gizmo or magic wand in the world that can give a tragic wine a Hollywood movie ending.